HOARD: My Writer's Objectives

I thought it would be helpful to explain what I hope to achieve in my work for HOARD. After some reflection I’ve realised that I have three main objectives:

The development of my own writing practice. This always begins with the hoarding of personal experiences. I gather together moments which I then subject to a process of re-evaluation and re-contextualistion. I transform them through the literary and creative act into something other. My work for HOARD will examine and extend this practice.

The opening up of my writing practice through communication with the HOARD artists. I will be able to witness their artistic thinking, practice and technique. More specifically, I will be able to see what materials and experiences they hoard, how they hoard them and how they interact with that hoard. This will allow me to reflect critically and creatively upon my own processes and writing style.

The creation of pieces that respond both critically and creatively to the work of others. I will take inspiration from the processes of the HOARD artists, the works they produce and the ideas and objects they refuse. With the artists’ permission, this material will become the material for my own writerly reflections.

The Writer’s Blog on the HOARD website will play a central part in my attempts to meet these objectives. You can think of it in the following ways: as a kind of writer’s workbook; as a written hoard; as a stockpile of jettisoned words; and as a developing literary work in its own right. I’ll be using the blog space to post a series of short experimental pieces in which I explore different aspects of my style and practice. I will investigate context, sentence construction and meaning production. I will also look to challenge conventional constraints, including those of form, length and narrative.

In addition to the Writer's Blog I’ll be writing a series of pieces that make use of my hoard of personal experiences and memories. These texts will have a counter-biographical function and will be characterised by my use of the techniques and practice developed in the pieces posted on the blog.

Finally, I hope to produce critical-creative reflections and responses to the works on show at HOARD and the processes of the artists involved.

by James Holden

This text is an edited version of a blog post entitled ‘Welcome to the HOARD Writer’s Blog’, written by myself and published on the HOARD website on Friday 2nd May 2014. You can read the original blog post in full here.